Bariatric surgery can cut in half the risk of premature heart disease and stroke in teenagers with severe obesity, a study has found. The study, based on a prediction model, showed that prior to bariatric surgery the overall risk of a severely obese teen having a fatal or non-fatal heart attack, stroke, heart failure or other heart disease event over a 30-year period was 8 per cent on average. One year after surgery, the risk of a heart disease event would be cut in half — to 4 per cent…

Adolescents who smoke pot as early as 14 have decreased verbal abilities and are more likely to drop out of school than those who hold off until age 17 beforeLIGHTING up their first joint, a new study has found. The study found links between cannabis use and brain impairment only in the areas of verbal IQ and specific cognitive abilities related to frontal parts of the brain, particularly those that require learning by trial-and-error. “We found that adolescents who started using cannabis at 17 or older performed equally well as…

One in five teens regularly lose sleep over social media, waking up in the middle of the night to send or check messages on social media. This makes them three times more likely to feel constantly tired at school in comparison to their peers who do not log on at night, warns a new UK study. Researchers at Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) in the UK also found that girls are much more likely to access their social media accounts during the night than…

British teenagers drink almost a bathtub full of sugary drinks each year, Cancer Research UK said on Tuesday as the charity urged the government to do more to improve children’s diets. Children aged 11 to 18 consume on average 234 cans of sugar-sweetened soft drinks each year, CRUK said. The figure amounts to almost a bath full and is more than double the figure for children aged between four and 10, whose average annual intake is 110 cans. The data stems from a recent report carried out by the government’s…

The number of U.S. adolescents and young adults with untreated depression may be on the rise, a recent study suggests. For youth ages 12 to 17, the prevalence of depression increased from 8.7 percent in 2005 to 11.3 percent in 2014, the study found. Among adults aged 18 to 25, the prevalence climbed from 8.8 percent to 9.6 percent during the study period. But there hasn’t been much change in the proportion of teens and young adults seeking mental health treatment, the study also found. “We already know that teens…

Poor self-regulation among teens is strongly associated with when one sleeps in relation to their body’s natural circadian rhythm, finds a study. According to the study, published in the journal Pediatrics, daytime sleepiness and being a night owl appear to be more strongly associated with poor self-regulation. “The results of this study suggest it is not how long you sleep that has the biggest impact on self-regulation, but when you sleep in relation to the body’s natural circadian rhythms and how impaired you are by sleepiness,” said Judith Owens, Director…